There’s a very good chance that you remember nothing at all of the Democratic 2020 primary cycle, maybe Bernie Sanders’ uncombable hair, maybe Elizabeth Warren mouthing some policy proposal that sounded smart even if no one understood it, maybe the …
Thomas Mann predicted the New World Order
“What was it, then? What was in the air? A love of quarrels. Acute petulance. Nameless impatience. A universal penchant for nasty verbal exchanges and outbursts of rage, even fisticuffs.” Near the end of his novel The Magic Mountain, …
Why are we Polanski hypocrites?
This is a tale of censorship. In 2019, Roman Polanski’s film about the Dreyfus Affair, An Officer and a Spy, was nominated for 12 César awards and won the Grand Jury prize at Venice. But, due to #MeToo, it was …
How Trump could liberate Europe
The EU’s worst nightmare has come true: Donald Trump is returning to the White House. It’s not hard to imagine the panic that many leaders must feeling as they gather this morning in Budapest for the European Political Community summit. …
MAGA must be reborn
“This is a movement like no one’s seen before… the greatest political movement of all time… the most incredible political thing…” Donald Trump didn’t hold back in his victory speech. And though he is known for his rhetorical exaggerations, it …
Chelsea’s bitches are back
On Tuesday nights, in the boarding houses of my single-sex school, girls crowded around laptops to watch seasoned Sloanes tear each other to bits on catch-up TV. They gawped as the cast of Made in Chelsea shagged each other’s boyfriends, …
Xi Jinping has a peasant soul
The Chinese rock band Varihnaz is more likely to sing about pesticides and rice than love and loss. Its part-farmer, part-musician bandmates appeal to young Chinese who dream of a simpler, slower way of life beyond the frenzied cities. Its …
What Donald shares with de Gaulle
A perceptive journalist once said that Donald Trump should be taken “seriously but not literally”. The same could have been said about Charles de Gaulle. On the opening page of his memoirs, he wrote that his “certain idea of France” …
Welcome back to Trumpland
“He watched the play with great intensity,” wrote Cormac McCarthy in All the Pretty Horses. “He’d the notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but …
Trumpism won’t save Middle America
Grey squirrels don’t command much love, here in the 51st state. When Brits make memes about them, it’s usually a visual shorthand for strong views on immigration. But in their native North America they’re firmly associated with Disney princesses, and …
The US Constitution is anti-democratic
However Americans just voted, they can be in absolutely no doubt that the 2024 election was the most important ever. That, after all, is what both candidates have ceaselessly been telling them. For Kamala Harris, this is “one of the …
JD Vance: prince of the MAGA movement
The nomination of J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate has already proved controversial. With Trump leading in the polls, it means the 39-year-old is likely to become the next vice president of the United States. Perhaps more importantly, it …
Will soccer moms win it for Kamala?
Journalists have now spent nearly a decade haunting the farms and taverns of rural America, trying to understand why millions of decent heartlanders voted for Trump. It’s a romantic story, casting the underdogs against elites, and explaining how America’s forgotten …
America is tortured by demons
The United States is the land of conspiracy theories, not least when it’s busy electing a president. Such theories are a secular version of the idea of a malevolent God, for which the world is a sinister place but at …
Only the Republicans can stop Jew hatred
Given some basic wisdom, directing for the stage is rather simple. The wisdom is that: “The audience don’t care.” They don’t care where the characters “went to school”, or what memory the actor is dredging up to influence his performance; …